You Know You Live in a Small Town If....

I got the paper from the end of the driveway the other day and began skimming the headlines on the front page. Powder Puff Action (for the middle school). Battle of the High School Bands. Church Women Master Art of Pie-Making. Pie making? On the front page? Nice picture of older women with aprons and pie dough.

My first reaction was to laugh. The "big city" girl from Ohio came out in me and I thought that this was just truly ridiculous. Pie Making should be in the Lifestyle section at best, right?

My second reaction was far more favorable. The day was a good one. International shenanigans must be under a modicum of control. National news was at a minimum. State politics was in a quiet mode. And locally, nothing bad was happening. And because of all this, I got to read about a wonderful group of ladies learning to bake pies.

On days like this, rather than sigh at small town living, I should rejoice. Yes, there were other headlines throughout the paper that showed some unrest, but the front page set the tone for my day. I want to always live where making pies can be front page news.

Other news:

• Katherine had her last soccer game. It was cold. VERY cold. It was 50, no sun, and the wind was blowing at 16mph. I know this because Keith felt the need to look it up on his phone. I don't know why he felt knowing this information would be helpful. I decided that you had to love someone a whole lot to sit in the cold for 2 hours to watch them play a game!

• We had a hard freeze on Oct 30th. In NC. Really? What's up with that? Where are my balmy days? I do not wish to declare winter just 13 days after I finally declared fall. If you are hording the warmth, please stop and send it this way.

• Keith and I had a wonderful supper with a college friend of his named Ava and her husband Tommy. She is Ava Gardner's niece, for those of you who remember Ava Gardner. And she races cars - GTOs. Her newest car gets up over 150mph. I wonder what the first Ava would have thought of that?

She appeared in several high-profile films from the 1950s to 1970s, including The Hucksters (1947), Show Boat (1951), The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), The Barefoot Contessa (1954), Bhowani Junction (1956), On the Beach (1959), Seven Days in May (1964), The Night of the Iguana (1964), The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972), Earthquake (1974), and The Cassandra Crossing (1976).